It is the way of people, evolving without awareness until one day their entire lives are unfamiliar. Training wheels and rubber-toed sneakers, soft-pliable skin, and miniskirts, first and last times, suddenly gone like the leaves from a tree after an unexpected frost—stripped bare overnight.
I believe murmurations are accidentally intentional. A collection of birds honing onto the same wind pattern, and DNA responding with synchronicity. Humans may have something similar. Represented by moments when people seem to connect on a subliminal level.
Years ago, I attended a lawn concert in the middle of a county fair. The band, Train, was playing “Calling All Angels.” The sky was loudly full of stars. Not even the garish lights of the fair could drown them out. As the song unfurled, it felt as though me and the crowd were flying with spirits who’d honed into the same pattern, and our DNA had responded with synchronicity—humans letting go of the gravitational glue separating us from the intrinsic and ethereal experience we’re actually having.
In the past, I've had a few dozen synchronized events. There were moments with groups of people as well as one-on-one interactions. Swimming with adult offspring in the Pacific Ocean several weeks ago was, for me, a murmuration. Margarita laughing with a friend in a riverside tiny house was another. There were therapy sessions when words were in sync, like the wind carrying a delicate dust mote. I’ve experienced symbolic events that transform current situations and change what the future might’ve been. Several were attached to difficult and unpleasant situations, crows screaming in tandem, their wings furiously flapping as though timed to mime.
Dislocated murmurations—crunchy birds flying individual patterns without swooping in sync—are more frequent. These are easily noted on social media and uncomfortable family interactions. During my young adulthood, a relationship went from dear friends to dating, and in a very short period, the glorious murmuration crumpled. Others have resisted discord, their murmurations spanning decades, and I am unable to explain why. Humans capable of such a magical thing and mostly unaware of its existence should be surprising to me, but isn’t.
Disorganized relational space is where much of “us” resides in 2023—online or right smack in front of each other at a Panera ending our twenty-year friendship. This relationship had been a synchronized tango for long enough that it was assumed the dance would last into the next lifetime and maybe even the one after that.
People aren’t plastic birds dipping and rotating in sync over and over without change. One stumbles in a swirling gust, and the other misses the moment. The timing goes wonky, and the landscape feels unfamiliar. Either the pair drifts into separate wind patterns until contact is completely lost, or they force themselves into a headwind and tell the truth.
Sitting across from the stranger who used to be my friend and creating sentences for what caused the collapse of the murmuration wasn’t easy. I’ve never had a best friend before, and I’m not sure this was—it’s hard to tell when the rearview mirror displays months and months of missteps and miscommunications. Oddly, we’d both arrived at the unplanned ending with items that belonged to the other person, as though sensing the shift before it happened.
It is the way of people, evolving without awareness until one day their entire lives are unfamiliar. Training wheels and rubber-toed sneakers, soft-pliable skin, and miniskirts, first and last times, suddenly gone like the leaves from a tree after an unexpected frost—stripped bare overnight.
One of the last things said before saying good-bye was, “What in the actual fuck just happened?” The unspoken part was... We were supposed to be sitting together on rockers long after everyone else had moved on. Friends who plucked each other’s chin hairs and reminded one another what it was like to wear crowns and pretend we were ten again.
Instead, two crunchy birds headed in different directions.
The Leave Taking Tale
A wave retreats, and it is assumed another will follow. Humps lined up in succession on the horizon, with more waves certain, or so they say. It is how we humans cope—counting on subsequent breaths since one showed up previously. Spring overtakes winter, and summer sucks the rainy earth dry. The expectation of another cycle ends when another doesn’t arrive, surprising expectation into a startled pause.
“What now?” someone asked.
“I do not know,” said the old crow.
“If you did, what would you say?" the someone asked.
“I suppose we offer grace to ourselves, even when we think we should’ve done better,” replied the old crow.
“And what then?” questioned the someone.
“And then, I’ll ask the someone to take care of my friend.”